Ona Judge’s story is one that is rarely told-and in bringing it to light, Dunbar seeks to interrogate the enduring effects of slavery, paternalism, and racism on American society. The result is a book which seeks to examine themes of slavery and paternalism, freedom and agency, the failed promises of America, and whose stories get preserved in the historical record. Dunbar’s historical narrative fuses information gleaned from letters and diary entries with fictionalized speculation rooted in sociopolitical mores of the late 1700s. Erica Armstrong Dunbar is a historian, scholar, and Pennsylvania native whose scholarship and academic career, in her own words, have focused on “the lives of women of Africa descent who called America their home during the 18th and 19th centuries.” In Never Caught, Dunbar seeks to probe a little-known facet of George Washington’s legacy: the escape of Washington’s wife Martha’s “dower slave” Ona Maria Judge and Washington’s fervent but ultimately failed attempts to recapture Ona from New Hampshire, strip her of her freedom, and return her to slavery at Mount Vernon.
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